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Previously unseen details of hedge funds' risk has just been published by the Financial Services Authority in a bid to inform the global debate on regulating financial services. The FSA's conclusion is that, if regulators want to focus on the main sources of risk to the financial system, they should look elsewhere.

The survey of the 50 largest UK hedge fund managers, which is new and comes in addition to the survey of hedge fund counterparties that has been running, in private – and which the FSA has now decided to begin publishing – twice a year since 2005, disclosed the hedge funds' aggregate positions as at the end of October. The FSA plans to reproduce this survey every six months and is working with other regulators, notably through the Financial Stability Board and the International Organization of Securities Commissions, to foster a global approach to monitoring hedge funds across the G20.

It looked at six primary measures of risk, and published aggregated details that have not been seen before.

First, the survey found that hedge funds have only a small 'footprint' in almost all of the market in which they invest. For example, the funds it surveyed accounted for less than 1% of European equities. The 'footprint' in this area was larger than the hedge funds' long positions, as it added the absolute value of short positions.

Second, It found that the average cash borrowing for the funds it surveyed was 202%. For example, a fund with $1bn would have borrowed $1.02bn.

Third, it found that the liquidity of the hedge funds' portfolios was sufficient to repay the sources of finance – funds from investors and borrowing – within the due time.

Fourth, and using data from the prime brokers examined in its counterparty survey, it found banks' average margin requirement for hedge funds was 38% – in other words, if a hedge fund borrows an asset from a bank, the lender requires the fund to give it collateral equal to 38% of the value of the asset. This is lower than it was in April last year, but higher than at any other time since the counterparties survey began in April 2005.

Fifth, the counterparty survey found that hedge funds are giving the banks twice as much margin as they asked for. Hedge fund managers keep this cushion to avoid having to liquidate positions if margin requirements suddenly increase.

Sixth, and finally, it measured the complexity of hedge funds by assessing the total number of open positions at each fund. These ranged from less than 50 at some long/short equity funds to between 5,000 and 50,000 at some quantitative and global macro funds. This compares favourably with the complexity of Long-Term Capital Management, the US hedge fund manager that blew up in 1998: LTCM had over 60,000 open positions.

The FSA said: "The data suggests that, on 31 October 2009, major hedge funds did not pose a potentially destabilising credit counterparty risk across the surveyed banks. It shows a relatively low level of 'leverage' under our various measures and suggest a contained level of risk from hedge funds at that time. Our analysis revealed no clear evidence to suggest that, from the banks and hedge fund mangers surveyed, any individual fund posed a significant systemic risk to the financial system at that time".